By The original uploader was Uris at English Wikipedia. -CC BY-SA 3.0,
Citigroup Inc. mistakenly credited a customer’s account with $81 trillion instead of the intended $280 last April, as reported by the Financial Times.
The erroneous transfer went unnoticed by two employees and was only identified by a third employee 90 minutes after it had been recorded. Fortunately, no funds were disbursed from the bank, and the incident was reported as a “near miss” to both the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A spokesperson for Citigroup stated in an email, “Although a transaction of this magnitude could not have been processed, our detection controls quickly recognized the input error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we promptly reversed the entry. Our preventive measures would have also ensured that no funds left the bank.”
The statement indicated that the incident did not affect either the bank or its client.
According to a report cited by the Financial Times, Citi experienced a total of 10 near misses involving $1 billion or more last year. This figure represents a decrease from the 13 incidents reported in the previous year. The report further noted that occurrences of near misses exceeding $1 billion are rare within the broader US banking sector.
